Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faderifting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2019-01-10 10:49 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2019-01-10 10:49 pm
Entry tags:
- ! mod plot,
- ! open,
- alexandrie d'asgard,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- byerly rutyer,
- cosima niehaus,
- darras rivain,
- gwenaëlle baudin,
- isaac,
- john silver,
- julius,
- kostos averesch,
- loki,
- teren von skraedder,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { anders },
- { cade harimann },
- { clarke griffin },
- { finel },
- { fingon },
- { hanzo shimada },
- { helena },
- { herian amsel },
- { ilias fabria },
- { inessa serra },
- { leander },
- { myrobalan shivana },
- { nari dahlasanor },
- { sidony veranas },
- { silas caron },
- { six },
- { solas },
- { sorrelean ashara },
- { thor }
OPEN: Kirkwail
WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.
The storm sweeps in like an assassin: unexpected, in the dark, and throwing sharp pricks of sleet at exposed eyes and noses with expert aim and enough force to almost draw blood if the angle is right. Half an hour after the clouds crest the cliffs is all it takes for the city to retract indoors and huddle around fireplaces, settling in for a long night that will, unforeseen, turn into a long two days.
The Gallows, too, is pelted with ice; the walls of the cliffs and the fortress protect much of it from the worst of the wind, but when it can find a path over or through the walls, it slams through windows or doors to scatter papers and snuff out fires.
In the dark, in the rain, hurrying between towers or already accustomed to jumping firelight casting strange shadows and the wind howling like a wounded animal, people might be forgiven if they don't notice at first. But there's a hanging in the courtyard, a dozen translucent wisps of bodies dangling from the idea of nooses, and there's a girl's voice in the basement of the templar tower screaming for her mother, and there's a ghostly man in the library holding the blade of a knife to his palm and whispering this is it, this is it—or maybe there isn't, actually, when you lift your head to pay closer attention.
But as the night wears on they multiply, and they brighten, and even if you haven't noticed them, they begin to notice you.
no subject
"Oh, très bon. The sense of movement is well captured." She would think the shading amateurish if the wretched thing were not catching the light in those precise wrong ways, making it an expert rendition instead. "Finely enough that I pray you not display them publicly when you are finished," she ends wryly. This would be when she takes a drink, but she'd given the wine up to Myr. Merde.
Something she isn't looking at makes a horrible sucking sound in... reverse... and she barely suppresses a shudder, looking instead at Benedict just in time to see a woman coalesce behind him to raise a knife to his throat. She winces preemptively.
no subject
“That’s for another time,” or never. Preferably never. It makes his pulse quicken uncomfortably to even contemplate explaining, let alone having to actually do it. At least--unwilling as he is to shed the blindfold--he's an excuse to sit out the conversation and take slow deep breaths to drive off the first starts of panic. The banter's at least a tolerable distraction from the too-near feeling of the four spirits--no, make that five--
"Benedict, are you all right?"
Audible distress draws the attention of the wraithish woman-thing with the sword. Its head spins all the way about to regard him before the body rotates to follow, locked on to Benedict. One moment it is there by the table; the next it is before the young mage, improbable sword upraised over its head.
no subject
"Wait," he says, unnerved by her approach despite his knowledge that no actual harm will come to him, "what's... what's she... don't do that." He backs up a few steps and is startled by hands reaching up from the ground, belonging to a rapidly materializing and raggedly-clothed throng of what appears to be peasants, their faces twisted in rage. Their fingers claw and tear at nothing, and he takes a few shuffling steps to try and free himself of them, turning only just in time to be met face-to-face with the new ghost.
"Stop it, stop it," he whines, hunching to hold his head in his hands, fully aware that there's no real danger yet not brave enough to look at any of it.
no subject
Not quite finished, but done all the same, the artist abruptly drops his charcoal and stands, performing a very creative form of agility that involves looking like a calf learning to frolic, trying not to trip over the lap-board while it clatters to the ground—and there he goes, dashing a few strides away from the group and its spectral terrors, to stand with his back turned to one and all. With one hand on his hip and the other flat on his collarbones, he breathes deeply, and—
Nope. That didn't work. Nothing comes up, fortunately, but his coughing sounds thick and unpleasant. Still, he does his level best to be as polite as a trim young man can possibly be while trying not to turn inside-out. Ah, dignity. Nothing like dry-heaving in front of someone you're about to meet. He's on his feet, at least, even if there is quite a lot of uncomfortable pacing, head-bowing, putting of hands on hips, and so on. See how manfully he suffers!!
"Ah-hrm," he says, with his fist in front of his mouth, as if he can startle his ills away by coughing aggressively.
Should anyone think to approach him before he's ready to return, he'll wave them off without looking, perhaps show them his index finger: Give me a minute.
no subject
The exercise of applying an intellectual framework really does wonders for keeping ones mind off the rampant insanity. Save that these were sketches of things meant to drive one insane. She stops looking at the drawings as well, casting her eyes to the ceiling instead. "Adrianus De Vries would have given his left arm to have seen these," she muses; a Nevarran artist of much note who'd made his fame on his mind-warping paintings of buildings and structures that could not possibly exist. Could barely exist on canvas. His self portrait had been...
Well.
no subject
The younger mage's vocal distress, whining as it may be, serves as goad to an already-lacerated conscience. Myr peels himself off the bench, taking up the staff he'd left beneath it to feel his way--
No, on second thought, one of those spirits was after him and now it's moved on to tormenting someone weaker because he wouldn't look at it. Enough of that. He strips the blindfold off and shoves it in his pocket, grabs the wine bottle blindly from off the table (don't look at the thing spreading around it don't look don't) and marches over to Benedict.
"Here," and he offers the bottle once he's in reaching distance. "Look at me, take a drink of this, and tell me in detail how awful it is."
Torn between targets, the wraith-spirit hesitates only a moment before bringing her sword down on Myr. He flinches but keeps going: "And maybe the Lady De La Fontaine can tell us more about Messere De Vries and whatever mad spirit inspired him to draw those little rolly things with the beaks. You're all right over there, serah?" That last to Leander.
Having lost all its original audience to mere reproductions of its glory, the squirming obscenity on the table retreats coyly down some orthogonal dimension until it vanishes from sight. A scent of baking sand and putrefying corpse replaces it.
no subject
"I know none of it is real," he deflects, to no one in particular-- he's just feeling defensive-- and takes a gulp of wine, holding onto it after. "There was a mob, in..."
He glances to Lexie, who was there, and wonders how much he should say. She didn't see what had chased him, bloodied, into the sewers they were using for the Inquisition's mass exeunt.
"...recently," he decides, "and I think it's them." If Kitty were here, she'd sneer at him. "And I-- I don't know what that other thing is. An awful woman with a sword." He takes another drink. "...she, um, just killed you."
no subject
He turns to see the culprit from a distance—oh, gone. Was it hanging around just to pose? That's flattering. These breezy, ego-laden thoughts are had while he straightens his clothes, brushes his hair back from his face a bit, and so on. Thusly recomposed, the artist strolls back toward his scattered tools and papers and sets about gathering them up, bending, stepping, bending again to swipe them from the floor.
The humanoid spectres, it would seem, are too commonplace to net his attention; if one takes a swing at him he'll probably lean away from it, but until then he hardly spares them a glance.
Lexie, though—he's looking at her between bows, still bright-eyed and breathless from stress, and smiling nonetheless. "And you, my dear Lady, are speaking nonsense. But bless you all the same." Here's a more intentional bow for her, along with a playful cant of his head, before he bends again to scrape his fingers beneath the edge of another page and snatch it up.
(It's conversational bait of the most transparent kind, of course, meant to encourage further praise. You can't just thank a person for a compliment; professional vanity requires a little dance.)
no subject
Minrathous.
Quickly, she seizes on the artist's attention, bow, words, rather than letting herself think of Minrathous. The Maker alone knows what she'll call into being if she thinks of Minrathous.
"My nonsense is only proper praise for having so faithfully captured this nonsense." Alexandrie smiles brightly, although she's quickly forced to cover both smile and nose with her handkerchief in light distress as the intensely powerful smell of of hot rotting remains washes past in the wake of the creature. She coughs primly into it rather than gagging as her throat is most desirous of.
"Where did you study?" she inquires, muffled by the cloth but perfectly genial despite both stench and remaining horrors.
loop zoop don't mind me
A mob recently. Myr's got no certain knowledge of what that might be, but has an inkling; he hadn't heard of Benedict coming to any grief inside Kirkwall itself. And the screaming peasants mobbing him aren't dressed like they bubbled up from Darktown--
Unaccountably his vision dims--he freezes a moment in heart-clutching alarm--as a pair of hands reach from the Fade to fold over his eyes. The rest of their owner materializes in short order: A woman with braided hair who's old and young at once, crone and maiden oddly overlaid. (Her smile is all the latter, mischievous and bright.) "We all do," Revered Mother Alvar says. "But I can't imagine being cruel to you even now."
no subject
The bottle slips from his shaking hand, and Benedict turns to rush out of the room with a muttered apology. Retching is heard shortly after: he didn't make it to the privy, it would seem, but at least no one has to bear witness to the contents of his stomach.
Until they enter the hallway, anyway.